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A personal perspective on animal welfare

Hormel Charged With Pig Farm Animal Cruelty

A sick pig sprayed down with blue paint by farm workers for no good reason

A sick pig sprayed down with blue paint by farm workers for no good reason

Peta’s investigation in a pig farm resulted in 22 criminal charges against Hormel in the state of Iowa. Pigs are severely abused and suffer from major neglect in ways most unimaginable. Pigs, as other livestock animals in America’s meat farms suffer immense cruelty from being sprayed down with paint, electrocution, neutered without anesthesia to being beaten and kicked like worthless objects. Pigs in particular are extremely intelligent and have been compared to human’s age six—they feel pain, experience love and loss. If you are a meat eater, please go organic, where they roam free and are treated with respect and compassion. Read the full article here.
11/3/08 Addendum

Hormel issued an email blast (at least to petitionists) below disclaiming that the pig farm cruelty expose was not about them, although I went to their site and found no such rebuttal – here is the email (not sure if it’s real or not):

A video was released the evening of September 16, 2008 that showed images from a hog farm in Iowa. It is important to note that the farm in the video is not a Hormel Foods’ farm and the people are not Hormel Foods’ employees.We find the images in this video appalling and they are inconsistent with our standards and industry standards for animal handling.

The abuse on the video depicted practices that are completely unacceptable.

We expect all current suppliers to adhere to the proper animal handling standards from day one and continue to do so throughout our relationship. We are working with our supplier to ensure this activity is no longer taking place, and they are investigating this matter and will take appropriate disciplinary actions, including terminating employees. Underscoring our company’s zero tolerance policy, we have in the past
terminated employees, truckers and contracts with producers when animal welfare issues have arisen.

Animal welfare and animal husbandry have always been top priority at Hormel Foods. This is simply about treating animals humanely because it’s the right thing to do. We take our zero tolerance policy for the inhumane treatment of animals very seriously and have implemented many standards outlined in our responsibility report :
http://www.hormelfoods.com/responsibility/process/animalWelfare.aspx.

Rochelle Kroc
Manager Of Consumer Response

Filed under: animal cruelty, farm animals, humane farming, local issues, , , , , , ,

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